Men who fall hard write great poetry
7 October 2008 
(Note: This was written two days before I posted it. I don’t have Internet in my apartment…)
I caught his eye as he glanced up in between lines of poetry, across the candlelit table. I probably shouldn’t have been there. It was well after 1 a.m., and this Man is more than 10 years older than me. But he has a library in his apartment, his body is breathtaking due to his devotion to yoga, and in case you forgot, he was reading me poetry across his candlelit kitchen table — poetry that he wrote two years ago.
He read me the entire book, sipping on tequila and pausing every few poems to ask if he should continue. I always said yes. I had never looked through such an intimate window to a man’s broken heart.
After talking to Kitty over the phone the next morning, I couldn’t help but think of Poet. His words from two years ago were those of a lover who had fallen hard. Twenty to 30 pages of aching heart, searching for explanation, delving for a memory when something everything went wrong.
Kitty told me that she had kissed Tom. And I realized that I would never write with the brokenheartedness that Poet did.
Women fall in love easily, a lot more easily than men. But I listened to him read from warped white pages, lines he had perfected over years of inner turmoil, I met his crystal blue eyes over the four small candles between us, and I decided that when men fall, they fall a lot harder than women.
My own recent fall apparently didn’t bruise me very deeply at all — something I didn’t realize until that morning. When Kitty confessed her kiss, I searched my heart for any form of anger or jealousy, any sense of betrayal, and I found none.
Where I should have found a shaking choke in my throat, an accusing finger reaching through the phone, I found instead an easy curiosity. Did his hairy chest bother her? What was he wearing? Sarcastic as usual? Oh God, he used the “I’m in bed with a really pretty girl” line?! He should really come up with a new one, honestly! We laughed.
Did I never fall for the one guy I thought I fell for, the guy I lost my virginity to and dated for a collective almost three years, the guy who was going to move to NYC to be with me before I shattered his heart (for the second time…)?
I fell, and I think I fell quickly, just not hard enough.
The Enigma of the Ex-Factor
25 April 2007 
How to handle ex-relationships seems to be an enigma in our society. Suddenly that person who knows your darkest secrets, who you vent to about everything and everyone else in your life, who can read your emotions before you even realize you have them, that person, who is “your person,” is gone.
Whether this was a serious, two-year-long dating relationship, a recent spark you hoped was going somewhere or life-long best friend who ditched you after a fight, the pain after the ending is raw. Even after time has passed, there’s not exactly an emotional form of plastic surgery to remove the scar it leaves.
Before the break-up, everyone always says they’ll be friends no matter what happens. Unfortunately, it seems the closer two people are, the more difficult it is to adapt when the relationship level changes, leaving them both alone, not to mention in utter discomposure, for an undetermined amount of time.
The worst part about this is that while in this unstable condition, your customary emotional outlet is the only person you can’t consult. So you try to cope in the best way you know how. You ignore it, analyze it, make it out better than it really is or just fill up your life so you don’t have time to think about it. While some of this can provide temporary relief, none of it works in the end.
Whether the break-up was the right choice or not, losing such a large part of your life in one fell swoop, going through months and changes of season without speaking–is this really the best way to deal with it? It seems like staying away that long makes it harder…even if you didn’t miss the relationship, you miss the person and associate that with the relationship, making the entire “x-factor” that much harder to deal with.
While I wish I had some concluding wisdom to impart, alas, I’m just as puzzled as everyone else.
It’s Hard
23 December 2006 
As much as I admire Carrie Bradshaw (sex and the city), there is one thing she does that I like to think I would never imitate: she goes back to Big.
Going back to an ex when you know it’s over, no matter which side of the breakup you’re on, rehashing all that pain that you’re finally able to numb to, is something that I like to think I am above doing. But sometimes, it’s hard to keep the thought from slipping through my thought censor unnoticed.
It’s hard because I remember the way his eyes get that half-moon shape when he’s pretending to be mad at me but isn’t. Because every once and awhile, I’ll see someone do that silly little pivot dance that he would do all the time even though he wasn’t much of a dancer. Because I read a book and find a line I know he would appreciate, but I can’t tell him.
But these things remain only thoughts and memories. Because it’s too hard for him to talk to me, or even see me. And when I do see him, I still see that dashing smile only in my memory, because he won’t look at me. Even if he did, he wouldn’t be smiling.
It’s hard because it’s Christmas. Because last year I made Christmas cookies (a big accomplishment for me) and walked through the snow to bring them to his family. Because I want to send him a Christmas card or give him a call, just to say hello, to see if he ever goes to Starbucks since I got him hooked (against all of his non-coffee-drinking intentions).
But I can’t, and won’t, do any of that. Because as hard as it is for me to keep him out of my life, it would be harder for him to try to be a part of it as a just a friend.
Because I don’t want either of us to make Carrie Bradshaw’s mistake.
